Articulation (speech) therapy can get repetitive at times, especially if you're working with a child who has a lot of sounds to work on at the word level. Rather than just repeating one sound after another, we've got a couple of tricks up our sleeves that we like to use to help a little kiddo forget they're actually doing speech therapy!

Image from amazon.com

Cut out pictures with the child’s target sound and take turns hiding a sticker under a card – the child tells you cards to flip over (thus practicing their speech sound) to see if the sticker is underneath! You can also do this for auditory discrimination tasks with pictures of minimal pairs and YOU tell the child where to look.

Stack paper cups (child gets one cup for every target word he or she says)

Drop coins or tokens into a jar; when it's filled the child gets to play a game!

Line up tokens or make stars on a page – once the child gets to a certain number, they’re done and get a break or to play a game! For younger kids, it can be helpful to draw a box for each trial, so that way they can visually see how many trials they have left

Make a copy of a sheet of pictures of target words and then play “Go Fish” looking for pairs – each time the child asks for a specific card, they’re practicing their target sound!

Any toy or game that involves multiple repetitions of an action… The child can earn a turn or piece of the game with every trial, or every X number of trials if the game has fewer turns/pieces or if the child is older)… Here are a few examples, but just about any game can be turned into artic practice!

Pop Up Pirate (child gets a sword for each trial)

Don’t Break the Ice (child gets an ice cube for each trial, when the ice is built, they get to play the game!)